The SC kills Bt talong, and takes down Philippine science as well

“No consensus on safety,” says the headline as news outlets reported yesterday that the Supreme Court has banned field trials for Bt talong, a GMO eggplant developed to resist pests.

I have no words. But as a scientist and as a plant biologist, I have to speak up.

There is clear consensus! Ask the various national
academies of science around the world, or the various independent
scientific professional societies. They have concluded that GMO
technology is safe.

An Italian research in 2014 published a major review of
1,783 research papers, reports and other material on GMO safety in the
journal Critical Review of Biotechnology. They found “little to no
evidence” that GMO crops had a negative impact on the environment.

In a review of European Union-funded research on GMO
safety conducted between 2001-2010, the European Commission concluded
that there is “no scientific evidence associating GMOs with higher risks
for the environment or for food and feed safety than conventional
plants and organisms.” The EU Science Adviser Anne Glover declared
publicly that GMO crops are safe – and was fired last year in part
because she dared tell the world what the scientific community had
concluded.

What the SC ruling stops is work by UPLB scientists who
engineered the Bt protein into eggplant, rendering it immune to the
ravages of insect pests.

Bt is so safe, even the organic farming community
certifies it can be used as a spray in organic farms. Bt corn, soybean
and cotton have been grown since the mid 1990s in the US and elsewhere
over tens of millions of hectares. There has been no scientifically
credible evidence that growing these Bt crops over the last decade has
had a substantial environmental impact. And because of the introduction
of Bt crops, insecticide use has been lowered in farms that carry these
GMO crops, reducing the exposure of farmers and consumers to synthetic
insecticides.

But there is a larger context to this issue that strikes
at the heart of our ability as a nation to harness modern technology for
our own needs.

In this one ruling, the Supreme Court just declared that
the Philippines should no longer invest in this technology. They have
set a high bar for allowing GMO trials by our scientists, a bar so high
that no one can reasonably overcome the legal obstacles they have put in
place.

Shackled scientists

The SC has just halted a major avenue for scientific
research in our country, and has ceded future agricultural progress to
the developed world, to China, or other countries that are using this
technology to develop the next generation of crops.

This SC ruling guarantees we will never be able to develop
this technology for our own country. In 5-15 years, when it becomes
clear that GMOs are the key to feeding the world, we will have to depend
on other countries to provide the technology because we prevented our
own scientists from working it out.

Remember whom this decision affects. The big agricultural
companies such as Monsanto will continue to work on GMO crops in their
US labs, where there is no restriction on their work. This ruling
affects our own Filipino scientists, those who have been working hard to
develop biotechnology as one of the tools we can use to help our own
farmers. The ones who are now shackled are the scientists at UP Los
Baños, or PhilRice, or those hardworking researchers at any other
agricultural laboratories in the country.

In the next decade, our country will face enormous
challenges. Our population continues to rise and we continue to need to
import food because our farms do not have the yields that allow them to
feed everyone in the country. Climate change is altering weather
patterns, and we also urgently need to develop new crops that can
withstand drought, salt water, or even flooding.

GMO crops provide a potential safe and targeted way to
help our farmers feed ourselves. It is not the only answer to our food
security issues, but every major agricultural scientist agrees that GMOs
will be an important tool in helping feed our country (or the world,
for that matter).

This Supreme Court ruling has just decreed that, when we
find out we need it the most, our own scientists will be unable to use
this technology to bring new crops to the field. At that future day, not
long in coming, we will find ourselves completely at the mercy of the
big agricultural companies who have continued to work this technology
out in their corporate labs.

Our scientists had a chance to work with this technology
and help develop crops made by Filipinos, for Filipinos. The SC,
metaphorically, just shut down their labs. – Rappler.com

Michael Purugganan is a Filipino scientist, and is the
Silver Professor of Biology and the Dean of Science at New York
University.